243 Responses

The question is, does the Government have a genuine will to make the best possible decisions for the people of Aotearoa? Actions speak louder than words and actions taken so far on many fronts simply don't match the spin. Government behaviour indicates that actions taken are directed by two drivers, being party ideology and what is best politically for the current crew. If making good decisions for the whole country was top priority we'd have good government, and we wouldn't have attempts like this one to convince the public that the Government is doing something worthwhile to tackle a problem when it really isn't.I'm also not convinced that the side effects of this particular scheme will be helpful. Officially labelling the fat kids, for instance.

Diet is now the leading cause of ill-health in New Zealand, and has overtaken tobacco. It deserves a response at least as strong as tobacco (which has actually been very weakly regulated considering how toxic it is).

The large majority of this "plan" (there is little supporting documentation) is in fact education of children. We know that education is a weak mechanism of behaviour change, particularly when it is not supported with other interventions.

However, the plan sidesteps the issue as deftly as Julian Savea, by narrowing obesity as a social problem to children. Obesity in children is highly problematic, and deserves a response. But most obesity is in adults, and most weight gain occurs during adulthood, and the risks associated with it increase proportionately. This is a continued process and does not stop with age. The MOH knows this and has very good data in Understanding Excess Body Weight: New Zealand Health Survey, but the plan ignores this entirely.

It's easy to say that children are ignorant and will do better with education and information. But when confronted by supposedly rational decision-making adults, this becomes more difficult.

I've been back at Uni the last 2 years - and the students just get bigger (and more by the year. If you can get them young and sort them out do! By 18/19/20 it's almost too late. The institutions are churning smart people but they sell the dumbest food. You can buy high sugar drinks by the truckload. Had a late night finishing an essay? Grab a bottle of V and slug it down before a lecture. Then I watch students jiggling and wriggling for the first hour of a lecture followed by the inevitable sugar let down body flop in the next. They use lifts and escalators instead of stairs and gobble down chips and chocolate from vending machines. Some of them are so ignorant about food and what it does to them, I despair. One tubby girl told me - without a trace of irony - that water breaks down fat particles so she buys bottles of the stuff and glugs away all day. Another male student says he doesn't eat meat because it's full of hormones! Go figure.

On the education thing, I worked part time as a cashier in a grocery store in the states in the 70s. The best education I ever got on healthy eating was having to study what people using food stamps (now the program is called SNAP) could and could not purchase with those coupons. Not sure how restrictive it is these days but it was a massive eye opener for me then.

Hah! My daughter was less than a week old when I took her into the geriatric hospital where I worked until a week before she was born. A well covered and fully breastfed child. The bollocking I got from the charge nurse for having an obese baby...I'll never forget it.

A neighbour spends six months of each year in the US. He reckons the most depressing sights are at the fast food joints where the doors have all been widened to allow admittance to the oversize mobility scooters driven by the morbidly obese.The scooters have big trays to hold the food, and cup holders for the buckets of fizzy drink.

I don’t believe it’s possible to have an obese and fully breastfed baby,

To be fair....she(the nurse!) was a very tall, very thin person, who had read about 'brown' fat cells and was convinced that my wee mite was loaded with them. Lurking there they were, ready to turn into hard, immovable adiposity. I was, for want of a better expression...a damn fine cow. I should have bottled and sold the stuff I produced. My babies thrived. As they are supposed to. Hmmm....see, I didn't take it to heart at all!

It hurts when a person is criticised for their weight...cue eating disorders on either end of the scale.

Another 'education' aspect...we should be teaching people to cook. Cheap, quick meals. Tasty. Because taste should be what it is about. Give people well cooked, tasty, fresh food and they'll wonder why they ever stomached that crap from You Know Where...who will remain un-named because they'll read this and sue my ass!

Honestly...I walked past one of those places the other day...the smell was atrocious!

So true – not only is the food healthier but so much cheaper. I look at all those bottles of pre-made pasta sauce and wonder why anyone would pay what amounts to 4x the price of the simple set of ingredients.

My sister visited from the US last summer. She mentioned that one of her son’s favourite home cooked meals was macaroni cheese. I said the same was true for our boys and that I’d make mine and we could compare recipes. She said, “you make yours from scratch”? And I thought to myself, how the world had changed such that a kids favourite memory of “home cooking” could be something that came out of a cardboard box.

Yep. The other day, I got one of the Young People to fry up some onions, chuck in garlic, salt and pepper and a tin of cheap chopped peeled tomatoes. "Boil the shit out of it" I instructed (the yoof terminology for 'reduce') and add a bit of vinegar.

Yum.

I can just hear your sister say "you make yours from scratch?"...does she have the accent?

Indeed she does - but so do I (the US is where I grew up). Perhaps moving to NZ was my saving grace - as we just didn't have the same degree of pre-made/packaged stuff as early on as they did in the US.

Must add a bit of vinegar next time (usually put in a TBL of worchestshire instead).. and a bay leaf :-).

Just called in at our local country gas station. Usually a fairly sparse shop area...but today....one could barely move for pallets (and I mean the wooden ones) full of soft drinks, energy drinks and a few token stands of bottled water (all quite heavily discounted). I mean shit loads of sugary crap, right where you'd have to step around to get to the milk fridge.

"Doing your bit for the obesity epidemic," I said, in what I thought was my schoolmarm voice. Big laughs, lots of involuntary hand rubbing in anticipation of the big sales to come.

The local school...a five minute walk away, is largely Maori. Do you think I should give them a ring and ask them how they feel about it?

In the other direction from us is another school whose pupils are mostly from the Mormom Church. Clean living Osmond types, you'd think? Turns out, they have some of the worst teeth in the area. Tea, coffee and alcohol might be sinful...but the sugary drinks and doughnuts are all good. Hallelujah!

We should all be so assertive. There really is no excuse for it in a country where potable drinking water standards are some of the best in the world; milk products are our main export earner; and locally grown fruit for natural juices is also in abundance. Taxing the fizzy ones heavily (and I mean heavily, putting them out of reach, particularly for low income families) and using that tax to subsidise milk and juice prices (our local grower industries) would be an entirely acceptable solution to me.

Who could complain about a taxation initiative that aims to feed our kids real food, as opposed to empty calories?

Here's what I'm saying: accosting parents or fat people or fat parents or chip-eating students or people at the dairy or whoeverthefuck about their choices is probably the LEAST helpful thing anyone can do.

(I barely post here anymore, compared to previously, so take from that what you will about my opinions of the tenor of discussions lately.)

Fruit juice is not a healthy option. It's a sugar-hit not much better than fizzy drinks. Better to consume whole fruit, where the fibre means the sugar is more gradually absorbed, and it's harder to over-consume.

Also, check the label on what you think is fruit juice. Often "fruit drink" has not much real juice and loads of added sugar. Flavoured milk drinks can have massive amounts of sugar also.